Inhibitor
by Not really Graceful
Summary: OC Self-Insert. If veterans walk away with scars, the rookies come out riddled with stab wounds, bleeding to death. Third Great Shinobi War era. KakaOC, MinaKushi, ObiRin, JirTsu. AU. Eventually.


**A/N: **I was reading **Déjà vu no Jutsu** by Vixen Tail, and **For Whom the Bell Tolls **by cwyscross, and was... inspired. This first chapter is mostly just exhibition, and probably scrapped about twenty different starts before I found this one. Yes, this is a girl-died-and-was-reincarnated-into-the-narutoverse story. Right now, they're at the tail-end of the second war, and cease-fires are being called pretty much everywhere. But Iwa's a bitch... so they try to fuck things up. This chapter is a bit slow, and there won't be any real action for a few. And yes, Riko is mostly convinced that she's insane right now. Or hallucinating. Or in a coma.

And please, inform me if there are any misspellings or grammar mistakes.

I will be using the Japanese term for some words, and in the future, probably jutsu because they tend to just sound better.

**Disclaimer: **Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto. I am not Masashi Kishimoto. I am Grace, and I own Riko.

**Summary: **OC Self-Insert. If veterans walk away with scars, the rookies come out riddled with stab wounds, bleeding to death. Third Shinobi War era. KakaOc, MinaKushi, ObiRin, JirTsu. [Alt. Summary: Toad Sage + woman - birth control = Riko.] AU.

**Chapter Summary: **In which a village burns down, a teenaged Yondaime tries to convince himself that he doesn't have the hots for a mini Red Hot-Blooded Habanero, they find our protagonist in a tree, Riko gets signed up for therapy, takes a wildly accurate guess about her parentage, and finds a purple-cheeked girl in an orphanage.

* * *

_**Inhibitor**_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

How To: Run Away

* * *

She was running.

Her three-year old body wasn't the best thing for that, though.

The low branches extending from bushes scratched at her arms and legs, ripping her already dirty second-hand blue t-shirt and black pants. Her shoes had been left back at the orphanage, when Emi had screamed at her to _run away, I can hold them off for a minute!_ She was surely dead by now, and Riko wanted to cry, but she knew that if she thought about that too much she'd go into shock. Which would be detrimental to her chances of survival, right now.

The orphanage - or what was left of it - bordered a small forest that ran along the inner side of the village walls, which she had escaped into. The group of shinobi (and she couldn't deny it now; she'd seen the glint of an Iwa forehead protector on the man who stabbed Manami through the chest) was methodically going through the streets of the small border town that she had lived in since her birth, killing every man, woman, and child they could find, burning down buildings for good measure. They probably didn't really care if anyone survived, but if they found her, she'd end up with a kunai through her skull or maybe a katana straight through her heart (and, real or not, she wasn't willing to take that risk). They did this to lower Konoha's morale, and get some supplies while they were at it.

It was sick, but she could understand why they did it.

A root that she hadn't seen caused her to trip, landing on her hands and knees. She stumbled back to her feet, offhandedly noticing that her palms were bleeding.

The Iwa shinobi had shown up about ten minutes ago, just after the sun set, and started the massacre on the northern side of the town - the side facing Grass, and, beyond that, Earth. Konoha was southeast of Kita Bōdātaun (North Border Town - what kind of idiot named a place that?), over a week of travel to get to. There was no chance of being able to run there and get help. Even the nearest town was over two hours away, and by then, the slaughter would be completed.

No one back there had any real ninja training. They didn't need any, for their lives as civilians. Sure, some knew basic taijutsu, which they used to defend their carts from the occasional bandit, but they wouldn't last a minute against an academy student, much less a jōnin.

All she could _do_ was run. She didn't have any skill she could use to protect the people who had raised her after her mother had died giving birth to her, didn't have any way to keep them from dying in a bloodbath, murdered by foreign shinobi. She was utterly useless, just a toddler with twenty years of excess memories stuck in her brain, ones that were telling her '_this is a dream, it's not real, can't be real; this world is a figment of your imagination'._

But even if this was only supposed to happen in some world depicted in a manga she had read in her past life, it _was _real, at least right now; people were being killed in the town she was running from, and she had a one-way ticket to hell being handed to her if any of the Iwa shinobi decided to follow her.

The Second Great Shinobi War was dying down, from what she could tell. The caretakers gossiped often, and since they were a border town, shinobi passed through frequently, stopping to rest or get supplies. Just yesterday, Emi had been talking in a whisper about how her boyfriend's uncle, who lived in Konoha, sent him a letter hinting at peace agreements between the hidden villages.

Which meant that the massacre of her townspeople was probably a last-ditch intimidation tactic by Iwa.

Stupid Iwa.

She slipped out of the southern village gates, which were wide open and unguarded. The body of Hiro, a middle-aged man that ran the butcher shop, lay in the center of the path that led out of the town, blood seeping from the side of his skull. He'd been a nice man; fair with his prices, and gave her a discount if she was the one running errands for the orphanage. She bowed once towards his body - the only sign of respect she had time for - before slipping into the tree line, where shadows could aid in her escape.

She was tiring quickly; three year olds weren't meant to have to run for their lives, and adrenaline was starting to be replaced with sorrow and dregs of desperation. The saliva in her mouth tasted like sawdust, making her want for water.

Branches kept catching at her ripped clothes, roots tripped her up, and leaves still wet from Tuesday's rain caused her to slip; she was running blind, and she knew it.

Ducking under an outstretched branch, she looked back through the foliage to where the town was being turned into ashes. Only a faintly glowing outline could be seen through the backlit trees, like her home was made of smoldering coals. By now, it probably was.

Vainly, she stretched out her senses to try and detect any chakra signatures in the burning village. There was... nothing. Just small dregs of chakra flickering out. The signatures of the Iwa shinobi - all of them rough, sharp, and intimidating - were retreating to the north. It seemed they were done with her town; no one was coming after her.

Chakra sensing was easy for her; back before she had died, no one she knew had chakra. But here, it was abundant, inside every living thing you encountered. The townspeople's had been small - unlocked and never expanded upon. The shinobi had extremely large reserves, she could tell - enough to equal over twenty civilians individually. But sensing was also taxing to her own reserves, which were quite small; bigger than any civilian toddler, but definitely not up to scratch with what ninja clan children would probably have. The only reason she didn't have civilian-level reserves was simple - she'd been trying the leaf exercise and expanding her sensing range for about a month and a half, since she figured out that it was possible to do so. Sensing required her to spread a thin layer of chakra across an area; chakra control was needed for that, and her control... was horrendous. And she couldn't figure out _why. _That bothered her - a lot.

So sensing at long-range like she was doing was _extremely_ taxing.

She judged that she was about a quarter of a mile away from her town by then. She'd been running for what felt like hours, but she knew it couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes. She was exhausted, bleeding, depressed, and just _empty. _Her whole town had been massacred, and she hadn't had any way to stop it; she was the_ only one left. _

There was a tree coming up on her right - a large one, like all in Fire Country were - that looked like it had a Riko-sized niche between its roots; she stopped when she got to it, squeezing herself in the hole, pressing her back flush against the bark, and bringing her scraped knees up to her chest. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she tucked her head down, dirtied white hair curtaining her face, and began to shake.

Half an hour later, she fell into a fitful sleep, nightmares of Manami being stabbed, Emi being torched, and countless other townspeople covered in blood haunting her.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Sixteen year old jōnin Namikaze Minato signaled for his team - comprised of himself, Uzumaki Kushina, an Uchiha he didn't really know, and Inuzuka Tsume, a chūnin, and the heir to her clan, a year younger than the rest of them - to stop.

They'd been returning from a fairly uneventful mission in Grass, which was as close as Konoha shinobi got to Earth now that the war was nearly over (par ANBU or missions that involved a fair amount of dirty work), when he smelled ash - ash and blood.

Frowning, he turned to Tsume for confirmation. She looked up from where she was conversing with Kuromaru, met his eyes, and nodded.

"It's coming from a bit to the west, Namikaze. About where that border town we stopped at last week is," she frowned. "D'you think...?"

"Probably. We need to check," He turned around on the branch he was standing on so that he could see Kushina and the Uchiha. "We'll head west. The border town should be about five minutes away; stop there and I'll give more orders, depending on what we find. Tsume-san, you lead - you've got the best nose - then Kushina and Uchiha-san. I'll take rear. We may encounter enemy-nin, so stay alert."

They barely made any sound as they leapt forward.

Minato feared the worst. Town massacres were unfortunately common during war. While Konoha would only kill retired shinobi and samurai in the land that they crossed, the other villages deemed it a good idea to destroy whole towns. It was, to put it simply, something that he despised. The high count of wasted life was enough to make him refuse those missions altogether, when he had the choice. And sometimes, he didn't, being an up-and-coming shinobi in Konoha's ranks.

The border town, Kita Bōdātaun, if he was correct, was coming up fast - the overwhelming scent becoming more distinct. Kushina looked like she wanted to gag, holding her hand over her nose and mouth. She'd always had heightened olfactory and auditory senses, but he had yet to figure out why. Tsume was holding her shirt over her nose, and Kuromaru was trying to find a way to bury his head in her clothes without tripping them up. The Uchiha was much less sensitive to smell than the rest of them, but his black shirt - the Uchiwa fan emblazoned on the back - was still covering the lower half of his face. Smoke was thick in the air.

When they got to the northern village gates - or what was left of them - he crouched, touching his finger to the ashy ground and spreading out a thin layer of chakra to enhance any vibrations in the earth. It was a sensing technique, one that Jiraiya-sensei had taught him before he was deployed to Ame. After searching for a minute, he opened his eyes to see his team staring at him. Tsume looked the most concerned; her tracking wouldn't work well with such an abundant smell, and if they had to track any enemy-nin, she'd need a chakra trail to go by, one that could only be left by chakra-enhanced activities. But they faded quickly, and by the small patches of flames scattered about, collapsed buildings, and corpses, he could tell that some number of hours had passed since the town had been set ablaze. Whoever had done this would be getting out alive, unfortunately.

"Search the town. I can't sense anyone alive, but... just check. I don't want to be leaving anyone here to die. Tsume-san, I can't find a chakra trail, either. It's probably been about twelve hours since the perpetrators started this, give or take. If we find anyone, we can question them later," He sighed. "You and Uchiha-san look for survivors in the southern part of the town. Try to put out any fires you see. Kushina and I will take the north. Alert me if anyone is found. Standard call. Go."

Tsume and the Uchiha leapt off after nodding, and he turned his attention to Kushina. Her face was pinched up, like she was trying not to cry. He laid a hand on her chūnin vest-clad shoulder, and squeezed.

"You okay, Kushina?" He asked.

She jumped, as if startled, and turned to face him. Licking her lips (which were very pretty, he thought. Actually, Kushina herself was very pre-

He quickly cut off that train of thought), she shifted her weight a bit, then looked him in the eyes.

"I'm fine, baka. Just reminds me a bit of... you know." Oh. _Oh._

"Oh." Uzushiogakure had been totally decimated just over a decade ago, when Kushina had been a kid. She was the last Uzumaki, as far as anyone knew. She'd escaped to Konoha just before the combined attack hit, with only a small backpack containing a week's worth of rations, and a letter to the Hokage detailing the circumstances. By the time she had reached the Village Hidden in the Leaves, her home had already been destroyed. If she hadn't been the Uzumaki princess, she wouldn't have been sent. But she was, and that was something Minato was thankful for. He didn't know what he would've done if he hadn't met her. She was his best friend - _just_ his best friend, he told himself.

This town being destroyed must have reminded her of the fall of Uzushio - hot and bloody.

"Well, um, you wanna take the east, and I'll take the west?" He inquired, trying to give her a smile, but it only turned out as an awkward grimace. He may have been the leader of this mission - and a new jōnin to boot - but he had near zero tact when it came to upset people, especially girls. And Kushina was in her own category.

She nodded, an odd expression on her face, and replied, "Sure," before leaping off towards the opposite side of the town, bright crimson hair that he loved so much held in a ponytail flying behind her.

\V/

For the next hour, he worked at sealing fires away into scrolls, as he had a nonexistent repertoire of suiton ninjutsu, and pulling corpses out of buildings, laying them in the roads. It wouldn't do to just let them rot, so he'd have to get Tsume to use a Gravedigger technique - doton was completely beyond his reach at the moment, but he was working on that - so that they could bury everyone. The town was pretty small; a maximum total of four hundred occupants, maybe. It was terrible to think that this happened frequently, and even more so during the first war. Trying to picture Konoha in a similar state... it made him want to break down and cry.

By the time he'd finished with his section, he was soaked with blood, which he knew would be a pain to get out of his clothing, and hoping that they could get out of the ghost town soon so that he could report to the Hokage. Sarutobi-sama needed to know that there'd been another massacre; it might put a wrench in his plans to end the war in the next month, depending on who had done it. It was most likely Iwa, as that was the closest enemy village, but they needed concrete proof to do anything about it.

When he was heading towards the town's center to see if anyone else had completed their search, he heard the standard call - two caws in quick succession, a pause, then a third - coming from the south, near where the gates would be, and automatically reverted his path. That call meant that someone was _alive; _his pace picked up considerably, along with his mood, and he flared his chakra, letting the rest of his team know that he was on his way. Hopefully Kushina would notice and come running. Minato knew that she'd be even more elated about a survivor than he was. She held life in high regard - higher then he did; she didn't kill unless forced to, and sometimes he thought that maybe her moral compass might be pointing a bit more in the direction of 'right' than his was. Mito-sama had instilled certain values in her at a young age, before he even began trying to build his.

Kushina nearly ran him over about fifty feet in front of the southern gates, grinning madly. So she'd either heard the call or sensed his chakra flare. Good, because otherwise, he would've had to find her.

"Namikaze, hurry your scrawny ass up, someone's alive, 'ttebane!" Her verbal tic was making an appearance, along with his surname; a sign that she was exited, or frustrated, or both. In any case, she seemed to be out of her funk. A Kushina not in a funk was a good Kushina, at least by his standards.

He smiled, as much as he could on the scene of a massacre, and shook his head at her antics, blond hair swaying.

They reached the gates, where a worried Tsume was leaning over the body of a man, and the Uchiha - how he hadn't figured out his name yet was beyond Minato - was scanning the path leading out of the town, sharingan active. That meant that there was a trail going past the walls, hopefully. Which would lead them to the survivor, most likely, as the man on the road was obviously dead. He had no chakra signature emanating from his body, a sure sign he was long gone, and blood pooled around his head.

When Kushina started talking, he shot her a half-hearted glare, telling her to be quiet. She glared right back, though with a little more force; Kushina didn't like to be interrupted, but he needed to be able to hear what Tsume and the Uchiha had to say.

"Report, Uchiha-san first."

The Uchiha turned towards him, deactivated the sharingan, and began speaking.

"All fires are out in the southeast section of the village, Namikaze-san. I placed as many bodies as I could find on the streets. All had suffered a stab wound of some type," he paused, frowning. "There were no signs of any jutsu used, besides a low level katon that anyone could do to set the buildings on fire."

So they'd covered their path; without any distinctive jutsu, he couldn't yet identify the killers. Which was a good thing for the people who had created the bloodbath, but bad for them.

Hopefully, if there _was_ a survivor, they could get information - whether by persuasion or force, whichever worked.

"Kushina? Anything special?"

She visibly darkened, lips thinning to a small line.

"No. Just sealed away fires and placed bodies in the roads," Her expression changed to one of outrage. "Kami, this is just _sick_! Who'd kill _children?_"

He sighed, and answered evenly, "You know who, Kushina, but we don't have proof. These guys cleaned up well." Ignoring her cry of _'Damn right, they clean up well, 'ttebane!'_, he turned to Tsume, who had now straightened up, and was... snarling?

"Tsume-san?"

"Didn't find anything till I got to an orphanage, Namikaze. The place is nearly burned down, unstable, and I won't set my foot inside unless you order me to," Here she paused, as if contemplating what to say. "Don't want to see dead babies."

Tsume turned towards the west, and pointed at the small forest that curved around the inside of the village. "Found a trail starting at the orphanage that came through to here. Obviously a kid no more than five, and I had to follow it manually. Kuromaru's nose is good, but all the blood and smoke is muddling it," She faced him again, and absently scratched behind her dog's ear. "Trail goes out the gates, and Uchiha said it continues on the right side of the road. Was waiting for you to get here so we could find the kid. Don't think they're in bad condition - no blood through the forest."

Glancing down at the dead man, she continued. "And this guy's been dead for over twelve hours, alright."

Minato let out a whoosh of air. So there was a _kid. _Kami, he hoped they were okay. He'd have to be a bit smoother with questioning, then. Trauma would most likely be present, and getting a straightforward answer might be tough. Or he could let Kushina do it; she was good with kids, surprisingly, and her style of interrogation was meant to lure the subject into a false sense of security. Answering truthfully, and purposefully blundering certain parts, along with her cheerful attitude, would have the kid spilling all the beans within a minute. She made people think she was an idiot, and sometimes she was, but her charisma made up for anything she missed.

"Good job, Tsume-san. You and Uchiha-san can do a gravedigger technique, I hope?" They both nodded. "Okay. Stay here and make holes large enough to bury twenty people individually. We don't have the luxury of time to make single ones. Kushina and I will follow the trail, and return here when we've collected the survivor. Start burying people if we take too long. "

"Hai."

He and Kushina sped out the gates and into the forest, picking up the trail where the Uchiha had indicated it continued, unaware of the Inuzuka heir speaking to the black-haired shinobi.

"You sure they aren't together, Uchiha?" she asked.

He lifted an eyebrow, scowl - which she was sure was a genetic trait among the clan - still in place.

"I am sure, Inuzuka. They have not displayed any romantic action towards each other for the duration of our mission, though there seems to be a mutual attraction that neither of them are aware of." He started off in the direction of the inner-village forest. "In here will be the best place for graves. Hurry up. I'd like to return to Konoha as soon as possible."

\V/

She was half-aware of presences - two, she thought, but she didn't really care; they weren't hostile, not like Iwa-nin - coming towards her hiding spot.

Other thoughts floated in and out of her mind, none of them really being comprehended, and she was still curled up and groggy with sleep. Nightmares had plagued her all night, waking her up at random intervals. Nightmares consisting of bloody caretakers, a butcher with his own cleaver through his skull, and possessed doll-children; ones that rung faint bells in her mind about ghost stories read around campfires and a horror movie she was fairly sure she had been coaxed into seeing.

There were also loud voices in her head, debating her sanity. And she was pretty sure she was insane.

Really, _Naruto_? She ended up reincarnated - _or hallucinating_, a voice supplied - into a manga she loosely followed in her... past life? Did some higher power hate her that much?

And now the town that had been a foothold for her stability (out-of-the-way, and there was only gossip to confirm her insane theories, and maybe the passing traveler that she always avoided) was burned to the ground. The people who had done it confirmed her fears, at least in the... more rational part of her brain, the part where whispers were absent. Her mental state had already been cracked, but now it was crumbling.

No, she hadn't really been close to anyone there - the children had avoided her, and the adults didn't understand her - but it was still about three hundred plus people that had been a constant in her detached life, killed in one night. For a minute, she even understood what Sasuke might have felt like, in the story she recalled; terrified, angry, and trying to deny everything that was happening, but coming away with nothing to support his mashed-together excuses.

That still didn't give him reason to abandon his comrades, though. If he hadn't been so close-minded about where he could gain power, the only thing in his tunnel vision revenge, he might have been able to see things from different points if view. If he had actually _thought_ about the numbers - one ninja, even an ANBU like Itachi, wouldn't have been able to take out a clan somewhere over five hundred strong, and not set off an alarm - he might have realized that the massacre was something caused by deep-running political problems, and Itachi was only carrying out orders, before he had killed his brother. Then Tobi - who was only Obito, in chibi form right now - had come and revealed the truth, and manipulated him into directing his hate towards Konoha.

Uchiha were so _stupid. _At least Sasuke (the idiot) had realized he was being misdirected, and Obito got out of his prolonged grieving of Rin. Eventually.

And now she was stuck at the tail-end of the Second Great Shinobi war, without a home.

But none of that shit had gone down yet, either. Obito hadn't been crushed by a rock; Rin hadn't been turned into a suicidal jinchuriki, Yahiko - that was his name, right? - hadn't been killed yet, the criminal Akatsuki hadn't been formed, and Naruto hadn't been orphaned. Actually, Jiraiya should be up in Ame by now, teaching the orphans.

A crazy thought crossed her mind, telling her that _hey, you can change that, you can keep that from happening, _before she dismissed it. Even if she _wasn't _hallucinating or insane, she doubted she'd be able to get into Konoha. It was still war-time, and a two year old claiming she'd come from the newly decimated Kita no Kokkyō no Machi could easily be written off as a spy, and be executed, or put in a holding cell for life. Even if she _was_ technically two years old.

And five minutes later, she was laughing at herself in her mind, a hint of hysteria present.

Because right then, the two people who had been nearing her tree hopped down from a branch. And they just _had_ to be the future Yondaime and Red Hot-Blooded Habanero.

_Ha. Very funny, brain. You can stop now._

But her sanity just crumbled a bit more, as these people - concrete proof of her theories, that a apart of her was trying to find _some _way to disprove - didn't leave. They were real, she was real, and this world, this situation, was real. At least, that's what the small part of her brain, that she knew was the rational part, was telling her.

She tried to amplify that, because it held the most promising outcome for her mind, but the voices trying to convince her that she was insane, or hallucinating, or both, were louder.

\V/

His first impression of the little girl was, '_she looks a lot like_ _Jiraiya-sensei_'.

Then, '_she'd do good to see Inoichi'._

The girl - who looked no older than four - was curled up in a niche between some roots in a tree twenty feet from the road, about a half mile away from the town she had run from, clothes a bit ripped, with dirt covering her pale skin. Her hair was snow-white, a bit brown in places where it looked like she had raked her hands through, and cropped to her shoulders. It stuck out every which way, obviously untamable, but not as spiky as Tsume's. Very few clans he knew of had white hair - the Hatake family was the only in Konoha, but theirs was more silver than white, and his sensei's parents were long gone, neither of them having bleach-colored hair in the first place, leaving his an enigma - and the majority were in Kiri; the Kaguya and Hozuki, both of which were protective of their Kekkei Genkai. They wouldn't have allowed a member to run off and settle in some Fire Country border town. The Hatake only consisted of Sakumo-san and Kakashi-kun now, and Miu-san before she died last year, and Minato knew his sensei's classmate wasn't the type to sleep around.

Then there was Jiraiya-sensei, who _was_ the type to sleep around. Had his sensei been so careless as to...

Well, there was always a chance that someone else had hair near-identical to the newly dubbed Sennin. He hoped.

The girl also had bags under her eyes - a sign of little sleep - and a far-away look in them, like she wasn't all there. He could see a few dried tear tracks running from her eyes, down her rounded cheeks, and off her chin, creating clear lines of skin.

No look of surprise passed over her face when he and Kushina jumped out of the trees to stand in front of her, her only reaction a faint widening of her eyes - like she recognized them, but how would that be possible? Neither of them had made a name for themselves yet - and subsequent narrowing, giving him the idea that she was suspicious, but also analyzing them. How a toddler could do that, he had no idea.

From the way she hugged herself a bit tighter, and pinched the hem of her blue t-shirt, she was nervous, on a subconscious level at least. The baby-fat-enhanced face he was staring at gave very little under his gaze, her dark brown eyes meeting his without hesitation. So she was confident. Confident enough to stare down someone she knew was obviously much stronger than herself.

Kushina knelt down in front of the girl, brushing a lock of her red hair out of her face, and tucking it behind her ear. She took a breath before launching into her speech. Minato just sat back, arms crossed, watching his best friend talk to the sole survivor of the massacre. The girl finally averted her gaze to the kunoichi.

"Hey, kid, can you tell me your name?" she asked.

The white-haired girl frowned minutely before answering, "Riko." _Jasmine Child._ Her reply had been short, sweet, and to the point, just like her name.

The Uzumaki sat, leaning forward a bit, and asked her if she had a family name.

"No. I'm an orphan. My mother was an orphan. I don't know who my dad is." So she had already been an orphan; that explained where Tsume had found the start of the trail. Her speech was clear and articulate, not garbled like most children's was. Didn't know who her father was either - he made note of that, storing the information away in the back of his mind.

"Well, Minato, the blonde idiot back there, and I are orphans too," She grinned. "We're from Konoha, 'ttebane. You wanna come back with us? We've got the best ramen in the world!"

Riko smiled, small, closed-mouthed, and a bit cynical, before asking in her high-pitched voice, "Do I actually have a choice?"

Kushina blinked a couple times, widened her grin to about ten watts, and said, tactless as always, "Well, no, but the ramen is _great._" Minato couldn't help but agree; Ichiraku was certainly the best stand he'd ever been to.

But this kid, only three, he discovered during the rest of Kushina's poorly disguised interrogation, had seen through her ploy. _Obviously_, she'd be going back to Konohagakure, whether she liked it or not, but no normal toddler would be able to look past the 'scary-ninja-people' to the underlying tones of the conversation (even if it was Kushina's half-assed style).

So, they had a prodigious, analytical, slightly cracked orphan that looked way too much like his sensei to be a coincidence, on their hands. Well, this would be _fun._

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

It took them three days, traveling by the treetops with Riko piggy-back riding Kushina - who had the most energy out of all of them - to reach Konoha.

They'd continued to subtly interrogate her along the way, and by the evening of their second day of travel, Kushina popped the question.

"So, Riko-chan, did you see the ninja who... attacked your town?" She asked, trying as best she could to not provoke a panic attack in their small ward. She could feel a slight stiffening coming from the girl clinging to her back, and silence reigned for a minute.

Riko was pondering her answer. In the story she remembered, there had been nothing about a massacre in any border towns, but there had also never been any white-haired girl popping up in the chapters focusing on the Third Great Shinobi war, either. So... if there had been a Riko back there, she had most likely been killed along with the rest of the town. Minato's team would never have had any proof that it was Iwa, even if they did speculate, so Konoha wouldn't have been able to fully retaliate.

Massacres were big deals, even if they were unfortunately common.

If she told them it had been Iwa - she knew it was, by the hitai-ate and the feel of the large group's chakra - there was a chance that the war would extend past it's designated due-date; a bad thing for everyone. But telling them she didn't know was out of the question too. Minato could probably read her like a book. The Namikaze was a prodigy, the future Yondaime. He was _already_ a jōnin, and would readily stab himself with a kunai before he told anyone he wasn't perceptive.

Which he was. To a large degree.

So a half-truth would be her best bet. They couldn't say she was lying when she was just... leaving out a bullet point. It would work. Hopefully.

She was trying to quell a war here.

For effect, she let her eyes stray down to Kushina's shoulder, and furrowed her brow, letting a frown overtake her lips. "Yes. But I couldn't see a hitai-ate on the one that was going to kill Emi-san." That was all true, luckily. Of the pair that had come to the orphanage, she'd only seen identification on one of them; the one that had killed Manami, Emi's second-in-command. She just omitted the fact that she had seen any other than Emi's murderer.

Cue sniffle. Maybe that would keep them from persisting.

\V/

When they finally reached the gates of Konoha, Riko had to keep herself from gaping.

Sure, she'd seen it drawn out in manga, and animated a few times in her past life, but Masashi Kishimoto's art couldn't even hold a candle to the real thing. Even if she was insane, she admitted to herself that she couldn't have imagined a village of that scale with the limited information she had on its actual layout. But she could just be automatically filling in details. Possibly.

Konoha was easily as large as... Manhattan? Some large city she could recall. The Hokage Mountain, three faces engraved in the rock - a lot like Mount Rushmore, she thought - watched over the Village Hidden in the Leaves; an accurate name, as the trees that the Shodaime had grown with his Mokuton stood tall all around the humongous walls, and a number littered the interior. The Hokage tower, clearly the largest building in the village, stood in front of the gigantic faces, connected to what she guessed was the academy.

And the village spread around that area in a semi-circle, like it was an epicenter. The placement of the Hokage's office was a very good strategic position - you couldn't sneak up from behind, as it backed the monument, and the whole village was layed out in front of it, allowing for a view of any oncoming attack - and with the academy adjacent to it, students could be escorted into the bunkers carved into the mountain relatively quickly. The only weak point she could spot was on top of the Hokage Mountain, where attacks could be launched from above. But maybe... ANBU? It was a reasonable guess, seeing as Root occupied the underground. But there were still countless other places that the ANBU HQ could be placed. She'd never know, unless she was somehow recruited. Which meant being a ninja - still a slightly foreign concept to her. She was so used to the idea of business being the largest profession pursued, not one where death was constant.

But she was very likely to be placed in the ninja academy, she knew. Her intelligence wouldn't allow for anything else; the curriculum of civilian schools didn't offer her anything, as she'd already learned it all in her past life. Now ninja - chakra, jutsu, weapons, survival skills, and tactics - she could go for. It was all fresh material; the only things she had were the meager bits of control she'd accomplished, memories of camping, Girl Scout meetings, and bastardized versions of war tactics from World History classes and football plays she used to study if she was bored.

(_You're weak here, _a voice in the back of her mind called out the obvious. _The only way you won't end up dead is if you become strong. Ninja is synonymous with strong, idiot.)_

And the ninja academy, in a few years, meant meeting the generation that contained the sensei, Obito, Rin, and the general jōnin populace that she could vaguely recall. So even more people who shouldn't exist, in a place that shouldn't exist, in a village that shouldn't exist, in a country that shouldn't exist, in a world that shouldn't exist. Wonderful for her mental health, really.

Walking down the main road in the direction of the tower, Minato's wife-to-be finally let her down so that she could walk on her own. She knew that the team needed to report to the Hokage; stumbling across the site of a massacre and picking up a toddler guaranteed that. But in all honesty, Riko just wanted to nap. She'd gotten near zero sleep on the journey to the village, a result of a continuous stream of intense nightmares plaguing her. As insane as she was, she figured that, _hey, it_'_ll go away soon, they weren't real_, but noooo, even if she was batshit crazy, she still had to endure dreams that woke her up in a cold sweat whenever she wanted to rest.

Being treated like a kid was nice, though. Back at the orphanage, before they'd all been killed, the caretakers had mostly left her alone after figuring out they were raising a 'genius' - one less child to worry about. She'd spent her free time helping take care of the few babies there were, trying to puzzle out her situation, and sticking leaves to her body by way of chakra. Her control was about as good as that of a pineapple - _did those even exist here? _- even after months of work. The kids her age had all avoided her, claiming she was 'the weird one', but Riko hadn't ever really been interested in their company. None of them had any mental capacity large enough to spark her attention, and they were all focused on playing 'House', and messing around with dolls. In the back of her mind, she recognized a faint pang of sorrow - even if they hadn't been friends, no kid deserved to die in a mass-murder - but brushed it off with a little difficulty.

Kushina, the red-haired sixteen year old that held as much charisma as the blonde jinchūriki that she remembered, seemed to have taken a liking to her. Maybe she was just curious, maybe it was just because, but it felt... nice. Really nice. At night, when it was clear that Riko wasn't going to go to sleep anytime soon, she just talked to her, maneuvering her thoughts away from the bloody killing-spree she had witnessed. It took a few of those conversations for the white-haired girl to remember that the Uzumaki's entire clan and village had been destroyed in a combined attack by larger ones that feared their fuinjutsu prowess. As far as she knew, Kushina was the last of her people. But the woman-in-a-toddler's-body drew up a couple names that she only vaguely cared about, in her mind; Nagato, who would become Pein if no one interfered- along with his parents, who were already deceased - and Karin, who was years away from being born, plus whatever family she had.

You couldn't attack a powerful village full of the world's best fuinjutsu masters and not expect _some_ to escape.

So maybe Kushina liked her because she reminded her of herself.

The future Yondaime wasn't as involved as the jinchūriki (Riko was fairly sure he didn't know that part about her yet), but he had lent her a blanket and forced a ration bar down her throat - those were disgusting, by the way - on the first day, and cajoled her into subservience of his command in his free time. Minato had a way with words, not unlike Naruto, but more subtle and less _loud. _He already had the seeds of village-wide leadership planted in him, even if he didn't realize it yet. He hadn't pried too much into her problems, thankfully, just gave her odd looks at times, like someone else's face was superimposed over her own.

He was also awkward around the edges, something she had thought hilarious - letting out a rare snort of amusement the few times the Yellow-Flash-to-be tripped over his own feet.

The Inuzuka heir had been nice enough, though she was extremely brash. But she held strong loyalty to her village, clan, and dog, earning her a grudging sense of respect from the misplaced girl-woman. The Uchiha, on the other hand, had kept the stick up his ass full-time - scowl a permanent fixture on his face - and nearly ignored her altogether. But she didn't brand him as stereotypical, at least not yet; she didn't know him, didn't know his values, so she wouldn't label him.

In a few years, though, that stick could become large enough to pierce his skull and skyrocket towards the moon.

\V/

A knock on the door to his office snapped Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage and student of his predecessor, out of his reverie.

His thoughts had been straying towards the small cracks in his S-ranked team (they had earned that title after their battle with Hanzō six months ago) and whether or not Iwa would finally call it quits and call for a ceasefire in the next month.

Tsunade had developed hemophobia after Dan's death nearly four months ago, and had barely been able to return to the hospital without freezing up. Combined with Nawaki-kun's decimation three years ago, the female Sannin seemed a bit... broken. But she'd eventually worked up the nerve - something she had always had an abundance of - to take on any cases that had _nothing_ to do with blood. Her late fiancé's niece, Shizune, was starting to show an interest in the medical arts, even at the tender age of five; something Tsunade had started using as a distraction. She had a number of talents; teaching being one of many - the Hokage had heard of her escapades in training some of the nurses - and little Shizune-chan had the potential to become as good a medic-nin as her occasional tutor with her amazing chakra control.

Orochimaru, he noticed, was becoming somewhat distant from his female teammate, though that could have been because of the absence of their third.

After being injured in their epic fight, Jiraiya had deigned it a good idea to stay in Ame and work on his spy network, simultaneously keeping an eye on Hanzō and recovering from the lingering effects of the wounds Tsunade hadn't been able to completely heal. And around the time of Dan's death, he'd sent a missive by way of frog messenger detailing the orphans he had stumbled upon and decided to train. Two boys and a girl that he said had the potential to become S-class. But Hiruzen could tell that his student was leaving something out; he didn't know what yet, but he'd wheedle it out sometime, whether it be in letter or person - most likely the latter.

"You may enter," he could feel Minato, along with his team, and... an extra signature. "Minato-kun"

The door slid open, revealing a weary Namikaze, always-chipper Kushina-chan, scowling Inuzuka Tsume, emotionless Uchiha Daiki, and a small girl, no older than Asuma.

A girl bearing a strong resemblance to his perverted student.

Well. It wasn't everyday that the Hokage of Konohagakure was surprised... but this was something new.

He kept his placid expression solid, though. Wouldn't be a Kage if he couldn't. "Report, please."

Minato nodded his head towards the man holding the position he wished to acquire in the future, and began.

"We completed the mission with little trouble, Hokage-sama," he glanced towards the toddler, who was observing the room with what seemed to be a critical eye. "During our return, shortly after we crossed the border of Fire Country, we came across Kita Bōdātaun, burned down with all its inhabitants killed."

He took a deep breath, returning his gaze to the Hokage, who was visibly frowning - a massacre would be detrimental to his plans to end the war soon - before continuing. "Riko-chan was the only one left. She had run into the surrounding forest, and no one followed her, apparently. She had not seen any identification on the shinobi who... murdered the caretakers at the orphanage."

Both men glanced towards the white-haired girl, who didn't seem to be listening, but a downward twitch of her lips denied that. The Hokage gave her another once-over - this time with the new information. An orphan, who may or may not know that she had a potential father, who had witnessed a killing-spree. She wasn't displaying much outward emotion, probably trying to keep it all in - a great deal of control, for someone so young. Her clothes were ripped in places, not having been changed since the night a few days ago; anything Kushina or Tsume could have given her would have been about ten times too large for her small frame. She had dark brown eyes - not Jiraiya's coloring, so maybe she acquired it from whomever her mother had been - that seemed to space in and out every few seconds, like she was about to drop off into sleep, bags under her eyes signifying that as the most likely option. Hiruzen could forgive that; she had probably been plagued by nightmares, constantly waking up, and young children required large amounts of rest that she was obviously not getting.

Her white hair was her most distinctive feature, stuck up in places that really shouldn't be possible, much like how the Toad Sage's had been until he had grown it out, and even then it was still defying gravity, but to a much smaller scale. Minato wouldn't have known that though. The teenager would have formed theories, yes, but he had no way to prove them.

Neither did Hiruzen, at the moment. But he could tell a nurse to draw some blood, get a test done, and have his answer printed in the neat handwriting of one of the hospital's best doctors on his desk by the next day.

Being Hokage had its privileges.

"Thank you, Minato-kun," his eyes strayed to the rest of the team, and chose. "Kushina-chan, kindly escort Riko-chan to the hospital for a check-up, please. Ask for Tsunade, she'd like to meet our new resident." And pound her lecherous teammate's head into the ground for being so careless.

Kushina nodded vigorously, obviously pleased to be able to see her distant relative. "Sure, Hokage-sama."

The Kage smiled a bit down at the girl he suspected was his student's child, watching attentively as she returned it with her own slightly hollow one. "You are dismissed. Turn in your written reports by tomorrow morning. Minato-kun, I need you to stay behind for a minute."

One ANBU leaving to give a message to a member of the hospital staff later, and the Sandaime and Namikaze were alone, par the Hokage's shadow guards.

They had many things to discuss.

\V/

"You need to eat more."

She shrugged. Eating wasn't something she felt up to. Sure, she could be insane, hallucinating, or in a coma somewhere, but she'd felt emotions about shows, Naruto included, so why shouldn't she be able to feel anything about them? Three hundred some people, dead. And she'd been actually connected to them, she guessed, which was more than she could say about the time she cried for a week when she'd watched the episode where Minato and Kushina - who she hadn't even met in... her past life - had died.

So she finally let herself feel all sad and emo and depressed. (_But only for a bit_, she tried to tell herself.)

A poke to her stomach - that _hurt_, goddammit - reminded her that this was_ Senju Tsunade,_ Slug Sennin, future Godaime if the timeline continued along the path she remembered, and greatest med-nin to ever see the light of day, telling her to eat something.

"Kid, do I need to tell you again?"

Riko looked the blonde in her amber eyes, and huffed. "Hn. No."

Crossing her arms and frowning down at the gaki that reminded her of a baka she knew rather well, Tsunade gave her a sharp glare.

When she'd been told that Kushina-chan was waiting with a patient she would like to see, she had meandered to one of the check-up rooms and proceeded to shove her sort-of niece out the door, ignoring her protests about how_ you're gonna punch Riko-chan, dattebane! Don't kick me outta here!,_ when she saw who her _patient_ was.

A little girl, no older than three - Riko, she supposed - with _white _hair. Who also looked like she hadn't eaten much for a while, and showed signs of insomnia. Ripped blue shirt and black pants, _no shoes, _a frame that made her look like she could be blown over by a gust of wind, and bags under her eyes caused Tsunade push her back onto the paper-covered examination table, trying to figure out _why _a toddler was in such a shape.

Until Kushina-chan managed to knock off the nurse trying to hold her back, force the door open, and pull her out of the room.

"_What, _Kushina-chan? I would like to examine that poor excuse for a three year old, _right now._" The Sennin growled out. Little Riko-chan, whether or not she was who she thought she was, was due for some medical attention. And have a Yamanaka forced on her.

The sixteen year old Uzumaki tugged her relative's head down so that she could whisper in her ear. "Ba-chan, this is confidential, but I'm pretty sure you'd find out eventually. Um, well, you know Kita Bōdātaun, right?"

Tsunade nodded her head, brows furrowed, and the jinchuriki continued. "Uh... you see, when we were returning from our mission to Grass we... kinda-found-it-all-burned-down-and-everyone-was-dead-'cept-Riko-chan-so-we-brought-her-back-with-us-and-I-kinda-sorta-maybe-think-Jiraiya-is-her-tousan-'cus-she's-got-reeeally-spikey-white-hair-kinda-like-his-and-she-grew-up-in-an-orphanage-so-please-please-please-be-at-least-a-_little_-nice, 'ttebane." She spit out. Kushina may be dense sometimes, but the new-found girl's suspected parentage was so obvious even she wouldn't overlook it.

Tsunade remembered the border town, having passed through a few times when she was deployed to the warfront that had wavered around in Grass and Earth. It was quite small, poor too, after all the merchants stopped traveling to it when the war had started. _That_ would explain the poor-quality clothes, and the rips were most likely from tree branches anyway. Less money meant less food, which also meant smaller meal portions, which would give the girl her orphan-thin structure, and she probably hadn't _wanted_ to eat; Kushina and her blonde idiot of a friend should have been able to force _something_ down her throat, though.

The cause for her insomnia was as clear as day, now.

"Kushina-chan. Did you _happen_ to make her eat anything?"

The red-head nodded, looking distressed. "Uh-huh. She looked even _worse_ when we found her, dattebane. But she still didn't really eat that much. Minato-baka got a ration bar into her on the first day, and some rabbit the past couple, but you know we don't really carry feasts in our packs."

She tilted her head to the side, and pressed her lips into a thin line. "The shoes?"

"Oh, um," Kushina sighed. "Riko-chan told us she left them at the orphanage when she ran away."

Tsunade nodded. It made sense. "Kay. Now scram. Go find Inoichi-kun and tell him he'll be gaining a patient," The heir was reputed as one of the best psychologists in his clan. Riko-chan _needed_ the best with what she'd seen. "It'll take me a bit to work through the gaki, just be here when I'm done and you can take her out to that ramen bar you like so much. Carbs will help her gain weight. Yes. Maybe some vegetables in it too..." She trailed off, starting to plan a diet of carb-heavy foods for the malnourished girl, and turned around to head back to where she was waiting.

The Uzumaki's goodbye was only acknowledged with a small backwards wave.

And now the med-nin was here, after giving Riko-chan a slightly-more-in-depth-than-usual physical to make sure she was in at least _okay _condition, glaring at the mini-female-Jiraiya.

"_Hnnn? _That's not a word; unless you're an Uchiha, kid, and I really doubt that."

She just lifted an eyebrow, and replied. "I said 'no', Tsunade-sama, and I'm fairly sure that I'm not an Uchiha. In fact, my looks are the polar opposite."

"Then it's not a word." She said, with a sense of finality.

Riko-chan continued anyway, shrugging. "I don't see how being a member of a certain clan automatically gives you the privilege of extra vocabulary."

Tsunade opened her mouth, about to retort, when she realized she was arguing with a three year old - and not even about dolls.

"Che. You still need to eat more. You're malnourished, if you haven't realized, and that can stunt your growth and development."

The girl just blinked. Well, seems she hadn't realized, even as scarily perceptive as she was. She opened her mouth, closed, and repeated the action a few times.

"Oh."

Sure, Riko had known that the portions back at the orphanage weren't ideal, exactly, and she was pretty thin, but she hadn't thought she was _malnourished._ She hadn't been starved, but she'd never really felt full, either, so maybe Tsunade was right. A few pounds would do her good.

But not right now. She was too stubborn to give up her abstinence of food when she'd just started.

"Fine, then."

The slug nodded, smug look on her face. "Well, Kushina-chan's gonna take you out to dinner after we're done here. Ichiraku Ramen or something. Carbs, anyway. Carbs are good for weight gain, girly. But don't forget fruits and vegetables, and protein. Some dairy too, for your bones."

Riko's eyes widened a bit. "Kushina-san's going to take me out to eat?" She hadn't expected that. Sure, the Uzumaki had been kind to her, but taking her out for _dinner..._ she hadn't been treated like she was special, par the 'genius' thing, for years. An apple at the orphanage she was likely to be dumped at would have been a fine dinner for her, thank you very much.

Huh. Maybe she had been underfed.

And she hadn't actually _told_ anyone she wouldn't eat, so... well, maybe she'd eat a bowl. But that was it. Seriously.

A knock on the door distracted Tsunade, who turned her head to face the sound.

A muffled, "Tsunade-sama?" could be heard, most likely from a nurse.

Tsunade answered with a "Come in, Miki." Miki, who had short brown hair, and was wearing the common nurse's outfit, opened the door. She was carrying a tray that held a few needles and gauze, a clipboard, and had a stethoscope around her neck.

"I'm here to do the vaccinations, and I've been told that Hokage-sama wanted a blood sample."

The S-ranked kunoichi froze for a second at the word _blood, _but nodded stiffly towards the nurse. "Thank you Miki. A blood sample is necessary." So Hiruzen-sensei had noticed, too. They needed to compare the white-haired girl's DNA to Jiraiya-baka's to be sure.

Stupid, careless teammates, producing adorable children shouldn't be allowed. But she couldn't pound her stupid, careless teammate's head into the ground with a valid reason unless she was positive he had produced an adorable child.

(Jiraiya and adorable were antonyms, certainly. But maybe this kid could balance him out a bit. Tsunade grinned in her head. _Balance him out a bit, for sure. Even _he _wouldn't perve in front of a toddler._)

She turned towards the aforementioned kid. "Gaki, be nice to Miki. I'll be back when she's done."

One stiff nod -Riko _hated_ needles - later, and the blonde was out the door.

As Miki prepared the needles, the girl-woman thought. If Tsunade had reacted to the word _blood, _then that meant Dan had already died. And so had Nawaki. But she hadn't left Konoha yet, which was good. Riko didn't know _when, _exactly, she had departed with Shizune, but it had probably been after the Third Shinobi War. Seeing as Shizune was around Kakashi's age, from what she could remember, and the Sennin didn't seem like the type of person to drag a three year-old on an around-the-world journey full of gambling and alcoholism. And _pet pigs,_ if she was correct.

But why did they need a blood sample? She'd never had to give one in her past life, so... _why? _

Could be because this was a slightly different system than what she had experienced before - no one had taken her _body fat percentage, _that was for sure. Or they catalogued everyone's blood... but that would be _really _impractical. Thousands upon thousands of citizens lived in Konoha, and maybe they had a bank for just the shinobi, but she wasn't one, at least not yet. Blood was also used for DNA testing so maybe-

Oh.

In her past life, this was called an _Aha! _Moment.

She hadn't really cared before, seeing as she had been in a mostly out-of-the-way town, and had been caught up in her insane-hallucinating-coma theory (still was, to be honest).

Riko had _white _hair.

So did Jiraiya.

Her hair was perpetually spiked up, unable to come out its gravity defying-ness no matter how hard she - or the now-dead orphanage caretakers - tried.

So was Jiraiya's.

And, well, Jiraiya, Great Toad Sage that he was, _called himself _a 'Super Pervert'.

_Fucking hell._

Did he _actually _manage to procreate? And _she_ was the outcome?

Who had she pissed of so much as to be reborn (_or hallucinating)_ as _his _daughter?

The only thing that snapped her out of her thoughts (though they were still moving at 10,000 miles per hour, a significant amount more than normal) was the feeling of a _needle _piercing the skin on her arm. _Goddamn, _she _hated_ needles.

\V/

Uzumaki Kushina was sitting on a stool at Ichiraku Ramen, happily munching away.

The white-haired girl sitting next to her, staring into space, was not.

Munching, that is.

"Hey, Riko-chan," she said around her mouthful of beautiful salt ramen. "You need to eat something. Ba-chan'll kill me if you remain a little stick forever." That was very true. She _did not_ want to experience Tsunade's chakra-enhanced punches.

The girl she had found in a tree blinked a few times, like she had been snapped out of thought. She probably had. Oops.

Riko-chan thought _a lot, _from what she'd gathered. Her prodigy-ness had shown through over the journey back home (Yes, home. It had taken her a while, after the fall of Uzu, but Konoha was her home, from now unto the future), and even though she had no shinobi training whatsoever, Kushina was sure she'd make a fine one, if she was entered into the academy. She already had the smarts - she just needed the skill. The clan kids her age wouldn't even begin training till sometime this year, as they were in wartime, even if it was nearly over, so she wasn't behind at all. Just maybe behind Kakashi-kun, in the physical part, but she outstreaked him by far in the mental.

Maybe not _mental health, _per se, as Tsunade had signed the girl up for therapy ("Every Thursday at three, and don't be late!") with Inoichi, but she was definitely a genius. Nara-smart, maybe. She'd have to get an IQ test from Shikaku and get the girl to do it, preferably without her realizing it. Though that was unlikely. Riko-chan was _scary _perceptive.

She took another bite of ramen.

"Oh. Sorry, Kushina-san. I was just spaced out. I'll eat, don't worry." Riko-chan took a small bite out of her small bowl of miso ramen; with vegetables, because Ba-chan would _actually _kill her if she didn't get any into the malnourished girl.

"It's fine, 'ttebane. But stop calling me '-san'. It makes me feel _old_."

Swallowing, Riko-chan turned her head to face her, inquisitive look on her face. "Then what should I call you?"

Kushina looked the girl in the eye, foxy grin in place. "Call me Kushina-_nee, _'ttebane."

"Um, uh, okay," the girl floundered. Then she _smiled_. A _real _smile. Sure, it was still small and close-mouthed, but _progress. _"Kushina-nee."

\V/

_Kushina-nee. _

The word echoed around in her head as she was shown to the bed she'd be sleeping in for the indefinite future, in Konoha's single orphanage.

After she'd finished her meager amount of dinner (at least compared to... Kushina-nee, who had stuffed her mouth with ten bowls of salt ramen - so much that Riko wondered how she'd managed to avoid a heart attack) she'd been walked to the orphanage, a particularly dreary place that reminded her a lot of the one now burned to a crisp, and handed off to a caretaker that looked to have been waiting for her, with a cheerful "Goodnight, 'ttebane!" from the red-head.

Kushina - Naruto's mother, second Kyuubi jinchūriki, and the future Yondaime's wife-to-be - told her to call her _nee-chan_. As in,_ sister_. She'd been pulling her own weight for so long that she'd nearly forgotten what it felt like to have a sister-type relationship. Even if she was some misplaced daughter of a Sannin, batshit insane to boot, she hadn't seen that coming. At all.

But then the hyperactive Red Hot-Blooded Habanero just has to grin and cause her plans to be thrown out the window; live in orphanage, go to academy, try and avoid contact with anyone - not substantial in the least, seeing as Jiraiya would be forced on her at some point, she'd been signed up for therapy sessions with Yamanaka Inoichi, and there was a war coming up, so she'd have to interact with _some _people. Now she'd somehow managed to form a bond with an important character (though that wasn't the right word, anymore) who seemed to _want_ to spend time in her presence.

She'd never had a friend - at least not in this life - and a person she could remember had _died_ in a story she'd read had proclaimed herself as her _sister_. She'd even managed to forget about the massacre she'd witnessed - _and hadn't been able to do anything about - _for a minute.

Goddamn, she really _was _insane, wasn't she?

"Riko-chan, right? Well, we don't have much, but there are a few extra sets of pajamas in this closet that you can use until you get your own." The words of the dark-haired caretaker grabbed her attention.

"Oh, um, thank you, Yuki-san." She stretched her arm and managed to grab a blue (score!) t-shirt and pants that only smelled slightly of mothballs. Yuki reminded her a lot of Manami (she'd tried to hide her wince when she'd opened the door, but she was pretty sure Kushina had seen it), in looks as well as personality.

Riko didn't have any worldly possessions, so she'd probably be taken to some second-hand store the next day to spend her small bit of allowance that all Konoha orphans were given to buy a few pairs of clothes. And shoes. Shoes were a must. The orphanage didn't look to have all that many books, so she could probably coax someone into leading her to the library; Konoha would have _so much more_ knowledge than the border town had had, and she couldn't wait to devour it. Even if it wasn't real.

She also had to get forms filled out about her citizenship status and all.

The door to the bathroom closed behind her, and she stepped out of the shower room, white hair dripping with water and ratty clothes a bundle in her arms. Those needed to be thrown away. Or she could keep them and use it as scrap fabric. Didn't matter at the moment, though.

The orphanage was comprised of two stories, each containing a number of rooms filled with small beds. The kitchen and dining room were located on the bottom floor, and there were a few bathrooms, and one shower room for each gender. No one had been in there, which she was glad for. Peace and quiet anywhere in an orphanage was something to be treasured, even when one was stark naked and covered in water.

Yuki was waiting outside the door, kind smile on her face. True, the layout of the building was easy to grasp, but she hadn't had any time to explore, and therefore had no idea which room it was that had been specified to sleep in. She could have found it her own, eventually, but she was so tired she would have fallen asleep on the staircase if need be. Uzumaki Kushina, and Senju Tsunade to a percent, were _exhausting, _and coupled with her insomnia, she was about to keel over. But, in all honesty, she'd probably only end up with a maximum four hours of sleep before she was woken up in a cold sweat. She could do her exploring then, when no kids were running around screaming, and the caretakers were fast asleep.

So she let Yuki lead her to a room on the second floor, where a couple small girls were already sleeping. They all looked to be around her (physical) age, lips parted, and breathing evenly.

A minute later, and she was in the only vacant bed in the room, the one closest to a window, drifting off into a dreamland filled with screams and visions of _Kushina-nee _dying, blood pouring out of her mouth, claw through her stomach, and Minato right behind her.

Yuki didn't even try to tuck the girl in, like she did with the other children. Not that she would notice.

\V/

The girl in the bed next to her was squirming, whimpering things about people named _Emi, _and _Manami, _and _Kushina-nee, _and_ Minato, _and even, at one point, _Naruto. _

Why the girl with white hair, whom she had never seen before, but was probably the one Yuki-san had been talking about that afternoon, was whimpering about someone named _fish cake, _she had no idea.

She had been woken up in the middle of the night by the weird girl, and hadn't been able to go back to sleep. She'd considered waking her up for a while, but it hadn't seemed so bad then, and she looked like she needed sleep. Bags under their eyes meant they were tired, right?

A fist nearly hit her face, which was about an inch away from the other girl's, as she had been looming over her, and Nohara Rin decided it was time to give her a gentle shove.

"Hey. Wake up, please." She whispered - it wouldn't be nice to wake up Ami-chan or Naoko-chan.

The four year-old had to move back a bit when another fist flew towards her face. She stepped forward again when the girl stopped moving. And shoved her. Again. Garnering no effect, Rin began to poke her cheek, pouting all the while.

Like all children, she didn't like not getting her way.

When another violent spasm shook the girl with white hair (and wasn't that an odd color?), she began to contemplate getting one of the caretakers that slept at the end of the hallway. They would surely be able to do something, where Rin had no idea how to proceed, as her attempts to wake her had been futile.

Turns out she didn't need to.

A sharp gasp emanated from the girl as she sat up. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and cheeks, and her chest was rising and falling rapidly. She didn't seem to notice Rin, curling in on herself; knees brought up to her chest, and arms wrapped around them. It must have been a _really _bad nightmare. She used to have them too - though never at the level her roommate seemed to have experienced - but they had stopped almost a whole year ago.

"Hey," she still didn't seem to see her, so she poked the girl in the side. "You okay?"

She turned her head to the side, finally noticing her, and her eyes widened a bit. "I'm fine," she took a deep breath, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat. "Sorry. Did I wake you up?"

Rin gave her a smile, the purple rectangles on her cheeks stretching. "Yea. Doesn't matter though. I'm Nohara Rin. What about you? Are you the one that Yuki-san was talking about earlier?"

"Uh, I'm Riko. Probably." Riko shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. _This _was _Rin? _The girl that Obito had started a war over? She was _so small - _maybe a year older than her, at most. But... Rin was an orphan? She certainly didn't remember reading anything about _that, _but she had never been an avid follower, so she might have just never seen it, or, scarily enough, she was starting to _forget_ things.

"You wanna talk about your nightmare? I heard doing that could help. You just gotta remember that it isn't real."

She shook her head... talking about people she didn't even really know, dying a tragic death by a monster that was only supposed to be known about in highly classified files probably wasn't a good idea.

The white-haired girl looked Rin in the eyes, and a sort of humorless smirk spread across her face. "Good advice, Rin-chan. Not real is a good thing..." she trailed off.

Rin looked a bit perplexed, but didn't say anything. If it was better for Riko-chan to just think about her dream, she'd let her. The girl in question seemed to have spaced out, so she got back under her covers and didn't say anything.

_You just gotta remember that it isn't real._

* * *

_**A/N: **_Whoo! First chapter, _done! _Took me forever to try and work out all the kinks, so I'm grateful it didn't take a whole _year. _

Anyways, this story is probably going to end up with a _very high _word count. I've got most of the major events planned out, but there are still small details that I need to decide what to do about. I've got a solid foundation for it up until about Naruto's birth, and that's where I'm getting a bit indecisive - does Tsunade stay in the village? Does the Uchiha Massacre happen? What are the results of this, that, etc.?

This Butterfly Effect thing makes my _head hurt. _

To answer any questions, Riko does believe that she is batshit insane, at the moment, and Rin's words... kinda didn't help with that. But don't worry; she'll get somewhat better about it all, eventually. Just not going to tell you when.

I hadn't originally planned for her village to be massacred, but it came to me in the middle of the night, and honestly, it's way better than what I had before, and fits much more seamlessly into the plot. Also gives me a chance to _increase _her psychological problems. Evil Author, I name thee myself. And there's _a lot _more evil where that came from.

This story will most likely end up being updated once a month, as the word count is so high, and I need to fit in some time to work on _Elizabeth,_ too.

Thank you for reading!


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